Leaky toilets are the single largest waste of water indoors, a problem that the present invention addresses. Many patents teach mechanical and electrically operated water leak and overflow detection and overflow control devices to detect and selectively prevent the leak and overflowing of toilets. However, they are generally unable to work in toilets and urinals that do not have a tank or an exposed tank and are generally also harder to install, i.e. to add-on to an existing fixture. These devices take sensor readings from inside the tank, which is harder to install or by measuring the vibration of the tank to detect errant operation, which is too indirect and lacks the nuance to detect almost imperceptible flows as they occur. The position of a sensor in the present invention is just inside or just under the rim hole, at the point where the water comes out to flush the system, which is a design not seen thus far in any other invention of the prior art. While some of the leak detectors of the prior art are microcontroller-based, they are not programmed to adapt to changes in the environment, of which there may be many. Nor do they attempt to reduce false negatives by the use of proximity detectors even though the use of such is commonplace in automatic flushing systems (the “electric eye”).
Current designs and products also do not take advantage of presence of multiple devices in a locale, by connecting to them in a mesh network or via a central server. Wired or wireless attachment of this type can bring tremendous value in providing large-scale data analysis for significant water savings and also providing the devices with “system updates” thus giving the system the very real benefit of being able to remotely change the behavior of the devices to ever-changing situations.
This invention relates generally to fluid control devices and more particularly to devices for alleviating toilet water leaks into the bowl and for overflows from the flush tank or the bowl. About 20% of all toilets leak, a small toilet leak can waste 30 gallons/day ($0.37/day), a medium leak 250 gallons/day ($3.10/day) and a large leak up to 4,000 gallons/day ($49/day). Reducing this waste is the motivation for this invention.